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Be The Media – Audio

Hi this is AJ, welcome to this month’s VIP lesson, Be the Media. How can you have a great career, have more job security and make more money? That’s what we’re discussing this month.

The reality is that job security is dead. Lifetime employment is dead. My dad’s generation, for example, had this idea of lifetime employment and the idea was, for his generation, that you would go to school, get a degree and then you would get a job in a company and then you would stay with that company your whole life, through your whole working career, until you retired. And the company would take care of you and as long as the company was doing fairly well, you were secure. Your job was secure.

And if you were good you could gradually work your way up the ladder in the company and in this way build a strong career, and that is, in fact, what my father did for 20 something years with IBM. But this is no longer the case. My father’s situation, my father’s example is quite rare nowadays. The truth is that you can lose your job at any time.

Now again, in the past the idea was that companies only cut jobs when they were doing badly, but now they cut jobs whether they’re doing badly or whether they’re doing well. Sometimes they’re doing very well and they cut jobs anyway just so they can do even better, make even more money. While that may or may not be good for the company at large, what it means is that jobs in general are much less secure and now, as you probably know, it’s quite rare to continue with one company for your whole working life.

In fact, my dad, though he retired with IBM, he was forced to retire early because the company was trying to get rid of jobs. He was able to work out a deal and retire early, but he retired earlier than he wanted to. So it even did affect my dad and his generation. Many people in his generation had the same experience. This is happening everywhere in the world, even in Japan. I live part-time in Japan and Japan has been famous for this idea of lifetime employment. This was at the core of the Japanese working identity, that they took care of their workers for their whole working life. In fact, in all of the world I believe they probably have the strongest tradition of lifetime job security. But now, even in Japan, this is becoming less and less common. So it’s a global phenomenon that’s happening.

So we really need to rethink our careers, whatever they are. We have to rethink job security. And we have to take a different approach to building our career, getting better jobs, hopefully making more money and just establishing more security so we aren’t constantly worried that if we lose our job than we’re out of money and we’re going to lose our house and all that stuff. So what nowadays determines your pay? What determines your security? If it’s not being safe with one company what is it? The answer is your perceived value in the marketplace, to the company you work for now to companies in general in your field, or if you work for the government than possibly agencies or non-profits, but it’s the same idea, your value.

This is a little bit of a vague idea, value. It has different elements that make it up, but the two primary ones to identify are…

1. Your expertise.

How good are you at your job, at what you do?

2. Your influence, the topic of a previous lesson we’ve had.

Of course, your influence is how many people you affect and how powerful you affect them. When you put those two things together you have this idea of your value within your field, within your job, within your career. And, of course, the more value you have the more money you can make, the more job security you have. But this time we define job security not as staying within one company, but rather the ability to easily get another job if necessary, so that if you lose your job now you’re not so panicked because you know, no problem I can go somewhere and get a job with about the same amount of pay or better, and that’s a kind of security too.

You need to develop both so, of course, you always need to develop your expertise, your abilities, your skills within your field and you need to develop your influence. And we’re going to talk a little bit more this month about some specific ways to develop that influence.

Let me give you an example from my own life to illustrate what I’m talking about, this idea of job security and career development without being dependent on one specific company. Now, I’m an English teacher and English teachers are not really famous for having great careers. In the past and even nowadays, the idea of an English teacher is someone who isn’t making much money, who’s stuck at one level… there aren’t really levels of English teaches so much in a traditional job. You get a job and you’re out of school and you make a certain amount of money and maybe you get little raises but that’s it, there’s not really much room to go up.

This was certainly the case for me as well. I’ve worked at many different schools and jobs and they all paid around the same. My last job was in San Francisco working for a school called IIC and I was making about $1200 a month. Which, in a city like San Francisco, is very low because San Francisco has extremely high rent, it’s an expensive city so I was just barely getting by. My wife and I were living in this tiny little studio apartment with a shared bathroom. I had to walk down the hall every time I had to go to the bathroom.

So, how did I make the jump then to my situation now where I have a very successful company, doing very well, I have plenty of money, plenty of time, a lot of freedom, it’s a huge difference in my career? I did these same two things I’m telling you.

• Number one I did all my expertise, which means I developed my skills as a teacher.

I tried new things constantly. I constantly pushed myself to be different than other teachers, to distinguish myself, stand out and be better. This was a process that took years, but eventually I did get better, better and better and I developed my own unique style and my own expertise in this area.

The second thing I did, which probably was even more influential in my success was that I developed my influence. I influenced more people. I reached more people. I developed a large worldwide international audience. This is what really established me as an expert in my field. This is what increased my income. This is what increased my value in this international marketplace of English teachers. It’s what made me much different than the thousands or tens of thousands of other English teachers out there.

Specifically, I used strategy that we’ll call, be the media. It’s a very simple strategy and very effective and it’s something you can use in your field. It doesn’t matter what your job is, what your field is. You can even use this in an area such as a hobby that you want to elevate yourself, your influence, your value. So even if you’re not working you can still use this in another area. So be the media. Be the media is a strategy for reaching more people, for building your expert status internationally.

Okay, let’s talk about specifically how to do this, the specific methods you can use to build your influence.

1. A website or blog. This should be no surprise.

You can use the Internet. In general, these tools use the Internet as a means of building an international audience in your field specifically. Step one is a blog, a blog as you know is simply a website where you write little posts, little articles about your field, about your topic. This does not mean you use this as your personal blog to talk about your vacation, post pictures of your family and all that stuff. There’s nothing wrong with that but do that on another website. You need to have a blog, a website specifically dedicated to your career, to your field.

So I, for example, when I started I created a blog called Effortless Language Acquisition was my first blog and then I changed it to Effortless English. But on that site I didn’t talk about my travels. I didn’t put other things, I had a separate, private, personal blog that I used just for family things, friends and things like that. So keep those separate. You have a career blog, a job blog, one for your field and this is where you’ll start to establish your expertise and build your influence in your field.

Think of this as your hub that you can have several pieces to your little media empire that you’re building, your mini media empire and the blog is sort of the center of it and everything else connects into the blog. Now, you might just call it your name, AJHoge.com for example, in my case. Or, you could think of some kind of brand if you want that focuses on your unique skills, your unique style, whatever it is, get a blog.

You’ll start out by just writing, daily would be great but weekly would even be fine, posts and articles on subjects related to your field. You could review the work of other people. You could just write your own ideas. You could discuss your experiences in the field. You could discuss problems you’ve seen and give your suggested solutions, all of these things are valid, and over time will help build your status as an expert. Thus building your value and thus giving you better job security and more influence. We’ll talk about specifically how in a minute.

Another piece of your media empire, your little small online media empire is a podcast, which is basically a radio show, that’s how you can think of it. It’s like a syndicated radio show online. Again, very, very simple and cheap, maybe even free to do. Just do a search for podcast hosts online, you’ll find many. This is where you’re going to do the same type of thing you’re doing on your blog writing, but now you’re going to do it with audio and you’re just going to talk about your field. You’re going to give advice and do many other things. We’ll talk specifically about what you can do in a minute.

2. Audio, radio show, podcast.

3. Number three, you’re going to have your own little TV show as part of your media empire.

You’re going to host this on YouTube, Vimeo or whatever, but you can use a free video hosting service and this again can be a simple format. It can just be in the beginning, your webcam. You can get more sophisticated if you want later, but a webcam is fine. Again, same thing, you’re going to talk about the same topics and focus on your field, giving advice, giving suggestions, giving your ideas. So now you have a little video channel, your own little TV show, you have a radio show, your podcast and you have like your own little online magazine, your blog.

4. Social media

Create a separate Facebook page just for your business, for your career. Again, not the same one as your personal Facebook page, separate. And you can do the same with Twitter if you like it’s up to you.

All of these things you’ll connect into your blog. So, when you do a podcast, an audio, you can embed it, you can take that file, the player and actually put it on your blog. So you write a summary of what you said in the audio and then you put that on your blog, so you have a blog post with your audio player. Same thing with your video with YouTube, you can easily embed that into your blog. In one place you have your audio, your video, your written stuff and your social media all connected in.

What do you do on your podcast, in your YouTube show? Well, there’s a few things you can do…

1. Give interviews, do interviews with experts, other experts.

Find experts in your field and do short interviews with them. Just chat with them and record it. Use video and audio and put that onto your YouTube channel, podcast, etc. When you do this it establishes you as an expert too. When you are constantly chatting with other experts, people will see you at the same level as these other people. It helps to build your expertise too and, of course, you’ll learn from these experts as you interview them, which again builds your expertise.

2. Give tips and advice. Give tips and advice to other people in your career.

3. Answer questions.

You can do this through Facebook comments or comments on your website. You can even actually have people call in with certain talk show software, where they can ask you questions live and then you answer them. As you do this your audience will slowly grow, especially within your field. As you affect more people your value rises, your perceived expertise and indeed your real influence increases and rises. As this happens so will your pay. It doesn’t happen instantly but it does happen.

When your audience gets big enough, when your influence is big enough, you may reach a point where you actually start receiving job interviews or job offers without even asking. Instead of you going out and seeking jobs and trying to get interviews, people may start contacting you because they are aware of you through your podcast, through your YouTube show, through your little small media empire.

That is what true job security is nowadays. It’s not staying in one job or one company it’s the ability to easily get other jobs whenever you want. Career development now is about jumping from company to company, each time going up in terms of pay and freedom and responsibility and all those things.

You can do this finally in any field. Any field you can imagine you can do this. You can write about it, talk to other experts, give advice, give suggestions and you can do this with video, audio and in writing. Build your audience. Build your influence and by doing that, become an expert in your field and gain true job security, the ability to get a job anytime you want anywhere you want.

See you next time. Have a great day. Bye-bye.